Carrier aggregation (CA) is a technique used in multicarrier wireless communications networks, including 3GPP LTE and WiMAX networks, in which bandwidth associated with multiple carriers (e.g., between two and five carriers) is aggregated and assigned to a single user equipment (UE) (or other wireless device). Allocating bandwidth to a UE in this manner is advantageous for increasing a communications throughput of the UE and the wireless communications network as a whole. However multiple classes of UEs exist in many communications networks. For example, a communications network may include a class of UEs that are CA-capable and another class of UEs that are not CA-capable (this latter class may correspond to legacy UEs).